^ On
a 05 June:
2003 Following Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer's 04 June memo to employees
commenting that there is serious competion from Linux free software, 33
million of the 55 million shares of VA Software Corp. (LNUX), which makes
such software, are traded on the NASDAQ, rising from their previous close
of $1.50 to an intraday high of $2.74 and closing at $2.16. They had traded
as low as $0.82 as recently as 17 April 2003 and $0.55 on 25 July 2002.
and as high as $61.25 on 04 September 2000 and $242.88 on 13 December 1999.
[3~year price chart >]

2002 Elizabeth Ann Smart, 14 [< photo],
is abducted by a gunman shortly after 01:00, from the bedroom she shares
with her sister Mary Katherine, 9, in the wealthy home of mortgage broker
Edward Smart, at about 1500 E. Kristianna Circle (420 North) in the Federal
Heights neighborhood of Salt Lake City. The other siblings are Charles,
17, Andrew, 12, Edward, 7, and William, 3. [photo: Elizabeth Smart in
December 2000 >] (on this same day, in San Diego, the trial
of David Westerfield, 50, begins, for the adbduction from her bedroom and
02 February 2002 murder of Danielle van Dam, 7, whose body was discovered
on 27 February 2002.) Elizabeth Smart was born on 03 November 1987. A
highly publicized search for her would go on for nine months. Richard
Albert Ricci, 48, a handyman who had worked in the Smart home, would be
considered a potential witness or suspect, though he denied knowing anything;
he would be arrested for an unrelated parole violation, suffer a brain hemorrhage
in jail on 27 August 2002, and die on 30 August 2002. In October 2002, Mary
Katherine would tell her father that she now thinks that the abductor may
have been “Emmanuel”. On 12 March 2003 Elizabeth Smart would
be found alive and well, in the Salt Lake City of Sandy, 25 km from her
home, accompanied by “Emmanuel” Brian David Mitchell, 49 [
photo below, right] (a drifter who had done 5 hours of work at the
Smarts's home in November 2001 and who believes that he is a prophet who
needs to preach to the homeless; he has no source of income other than handouts)
and by Wanda Eileen Barzee, 57, Mitchell's wife. All three wear wigs and
dark glasses, Elizabeth and Wanda are veiled..2002 Civil servant Hidenori Iinuma's decomposed body is
found in a discarded freezer. He had been reported missing in 1997 by his
wife Akemi Iinuma, now 40, who is arrested on 06 June 2002 on suspicion
of murder.

2002 Ngo Hoang Thao, 45, is sentenced
to death (by firing squad) by the People's Court of Thai Binh province,
Vietnam, for serving rat-poison-laced pork and tomatoes to his parents in
December 2001 after a series of conflicts with them. The couple died immediately
after eating.

2000 In Honiara, six armed rebels
from the Malaita Eagle Force capture Prime Minister Bartholemew Ulufa'alu
of the Solomons early in the morning and hold him hostage

1977 first personal
computer, the Apple II, goes on sale 1977 Coup
in Seychelles (National Day)  Golpe de Estado en las Seychelles: el
presidente Mancham es depuesto y el primer ministro asume el poder y establece
un sistema socialista de partido único.1975 Egypt
reopens the Suez Canal to international shipping, on the 8th anniversary
of the start of the 1967 6~Day War, because of which it had been closed
since June 1967.

1973 Gordon Sinclair forgets Lafayette.
Canadian radio commentator Gordon Sinclair
(1900~06~03  1984) delivers an editorial The
Americans praising the United States, calling it "the most
generous and possibly the least appreciated people on all the earth."
and saying: "I can name you 5000 times when the Americans raced to
the help of other people in trouble. Can you name me even one time
when someone else raced to the Americans in trouble? [Listen
to the original audio] 
Yes, I can. It was the time when the someone's name was Lafayette.
 Books by Gordon Sinclair: Footloose in India  Cannibal
Quest  Loose Among the Devils  Khyber Caravan  Bright
Paths to Adventure (1950)  Signpost to Adventure
(1952)  Will the Real Gordon Sinclair Please Stand Up?
(1966)  Will the Real Gordon Sinclair Please Sit Down?
(1975).

^1972 Laird testifies on Vietnam before Congress
Testifying before a joint Congressional
Appropriations Committee, Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird says the
increase in US military activity in Vietnam could add up to $5 billion
to the 1973 fiscal budget, doubling the annual cost of the war. This
increased US activity was in response to the North Vietnamese Nguyen
Hue Offensive, also called the Easter Offensive, which had been launched
on 31 March. This offensive was a massive invasion by North Vietnamese
forces designed to strike the blow that would win them the war. The
attacking force included 14 infantry divisions and 26 separate regiments,
with more than 120'000 soldiers and approximately 1200 tanks and other
armored vehicles. The main North Vietnamese objectives were Quang
Tri in the north, Kontum in the Central Highlands, and An Loc farther
to the south. In response, President Richard Nixon had ordered massive
support for the South Vietnamese defenders and their US advisers.
The number of US Air Force fighter-bombers in Southeast Asia was tripled,
and B-52s were quadrupled. Nixon ordered additional ships to join
the 7th Fleet, sending the aircraft carrier Kitty Hawk from the Philippines
to join the carriers already off the coast of Vietnam in providing
air support.

^1968 Robert F. Kennedy fatally shot
At 00:50 PST, Senator Robert F. Kennedy,
a presidential candidate, has just completed a speech celebrating his victory
in the California Primary. As star athletes Rafer Johnson and Roosevelt
Grier accompany Kennedy out a rear exit of the Ambassador Hotel, Palestinian
Sirhan Bishara Sirhan stepped forward with a rolled up campaign poster,
hiding his .22 revolver. He is only 30 cm away when he fires several shots
at Kennedy. Five others are wounded. Wrestling Sirhan to the ground, Grier
and Johnson take his gun away before anyone else is shot. Grier was distraught
afterward and blamed himself for allowing Kennedy to be shot. Sirhan confessed
to the crime at his trial and received a death sentence on 24 April 1969.
However, since the Supreme Court invalidated all death penalty sentences
in 1972, Sirhan will spend the rest of his life in prison. He has never
provided a clear explanation for why he targeted Bobby Kennedy. Hubert Humphrey
ended up running for the Democrats in 1968 and lost by a small margin to
Nixon. , Kennedy, critically wounded,
is rushed to the hospital where he fights for his life for the next thirty-two
hours. On the morning of 06 June he died, and two days later was buried
at Arlington National Cemetery, the final resting place of his assassinated
older brother, President John F. Kennedy.
Robert Kennedy, a legal counsel for various Senate subcommittees during
the 1950s, served as the manager of his brother’s successful presidential
campaign in 1960. Appointed attorney general by President Kennedy, he proved
a vigorous member of the cabinet, zealously prosecuting cases relating to
civil rights while closely advising the president on various domestic and
foreign issues. After Kennedy’s assassination
in 1963, he joined President Lyndon B. Johnson’s administration, but resigned
in 1964 to run successfully in New York for a Senate seat. Known in Congress
as an advocate of social reform and defender of the rights of minorities,
he also voiced criticism of the war in Vietnam.
Senator Robert Kennedy (D-New York) was a leading critic of the Johnson
administration's policy in Vietnam. Kennedy had initially been a supporter
of the Johnson administration's Vietnam War policy, but he became increasingly
critical after President Lyndon B. Johnson approved the resumed bombing
of North Vietnam in early 1966. Kennedy had declared his candidacy for the
Democratic presidential nomination in March 1968 after Senator Eugene McCarthy's
surprisingly strong showing in the New Hampshire primary. When Johnson announced
that he would not run for his party's nomination, Kennedy became the front-runner.
On the day of his death, he had just defeated McCarthy in the California
primary. In 1968, he was urged by many
of his supporters to run for president as an anti-war and socially progressive
Democratic. Hesitant until he saw positive primary returns for fellow anti-war
candidate Eugene McCarthy, he announced his candidacy for the Democratic
presidential nomination on 16 March 1968.
Fifteen days later, President Johnson announced that he would not seek reelection,
and Vice President Hubert Humphrey became the key Democratic hopeful, with
McCarthy and Kennedy trailing closely behind. However, Kennedy conducted
an energetic campaign, and on 04 June 1968, he won a major victory in the
California primary. In the early hours of the next morning, he gave a victory
speech to his supporters in the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, and then,
while making his way to a press conference by a side exit, he was fatally
wounded by Palestinian Sirhan Sirhan. Sirhan was arrested at the scene,
indicted for first degree murder, convicted, and, on 23 April 1969, sentenced
to die. However, his death sentence was commuted to life imprisonment in
1972 when the California Supreme Court abolished the death penalty.
Although Sirhan’s motives were not entirely
clear, the 05 June attack did come on the first anniversary of the Israeli
invasion of his homeland in the Six-Day War, and he may have been retaliating
against America’s historic support of Israel. Others have alleged that Sirhan
was part of a larger assassination conspiracy, reportedly brought on by
Kennedy’s promise to end the Vietnam War if elected president. These conspiracists
cite forensic evidence and witness testimony that they say proves the existence
of additional shooters who were not detained.

^1967 The Six-Day War begins
Responding to the Egyptian reoccupation
of Gaza and the closure of the Gulf of Aqaba to Israeli shipping,
Israel launches simultaneous military offensives against Egypt and
Syria. Jordan subsequently entered the fray, and so did Iraq and Lebanon.
But the Arab coalition was no match for Israel’s well-supplied and
famously proficient armed forces.
In six days, Israel occupied the Gaza Strip and the Sinai Peninsula
of Egypt, the Golan Heights of Syria, and the West Bank and Arab sector
of East Jerusalem, both previously under Jordanian rule.
The so-called Six-Day War gave Israel control of territory three times
its original size, and Jerusalem was unified under Jewish rule, despite
a UN resolution calling for the preservation of the holy city’s Arab
sector. Arab leaders, forced
to accept a UN cease-fire, met at Khartoum in the Sudan in August
to discuss the future of Israel in the Middle East. They decided upon
a policy of no peace, no negotiations, and no recognition of Israel,
and also made plans to zealously defend the rights of Palestinian
Arabs in the territories occupied by Israel.

^1966 Meredith starts his March Against
Fear James H.
Meredith, who in 1962 became the first African American to attend
the University of Mississippi, starts his lone "March Against Fear,"
in Memphis, Tennessee, bound for Jackson, Mississippi, in an attempt
to encourage voter registration by Southern African Americans.
A former serviceman in the US Air Force,
Meredith applied to the University of Mississippi in 1962, was accepted,
but then had his admission revoked when the registrar learned of his
race. A federal court ordered "Ole Miss" to admit him, but when he
went to register on 20 September 1962, he found the entrance to the
office blocked by Mississippi Governor Ross Barnett. On 28 September
the governor was found guilty of civil contempt and was ordered to
cease his interference with desegregation at the university or face
arrest and a fine of $10'000 a day.
On 30 September Meredith was escorted onto the Ole Miss campus by
US Marshals, setting off riots that resulted in the deaths of two
students. The next day, Meredith returned and began classes. The next
year, he graduated with a degree in government. Three years later,
Meredith returned to the public eye when he began his March Against
Fear. On 07 June, two days into
the march, he was sent to a hospital by a sniper’s bullet. However,
other civil rights leaders, such as Martin Luther King, Jr., and Stokely
Carmichael, arrived to continue the march without him. It was during
the March Against Fear that Carmichael, who was leader of the Student
Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, first spoke publicly of "Black
Power," which was his concept of militant African-American nationalism.
James Meredith later recovered and rejoined the march he had originated,
and, on 26 June, the marchers successfully reached their goal, Jackson,
Mississippi.

^1963 British Secretary of War resigns in sex
scandal. British Secretary
of War John Profumo resigns his post following revelations that he had lied
to the House of Commons about his sexual affair with Christine Keeler, an
alleged prostitute. At the time of the affair, Keeler was also involved
with Yevgeny "Eugene" Ivanov, a Soviet naval attaché who some suspected
was a spy. Although Profumo assured the government that he had not compromised
national security in any way, the scandal threatened to topple Prime Minister
Harold Macmillan's government. Age 48 in 1963, John Dennis Profumo was appointed
secretary of war by Macmillan in 1960. As war minister, he was in charge
of overseeing the British army. The post was a junior cabinet position,
but Profumo looked a good candidate for future promotion. He was married
to Valerie Hobson, a retired movie actress, and the Profumos were very much
at the center of "swinging '60s" society in the early 1960s.
One night in July 1961, John Profumo was at the Cliveden estate of Lord
"Bill" Astor when he was first introduced to 19-year-old Christine Keeler.
She was frolicking naked by the Cliveden pool. Keeler was at Cliveden as
a guest of Dr. Stephen Ward, a society osteopath and part-time portraitist
who rented a cottage at the estate from his friend Lord Astor. Keeler was
working as a showgirl at a London nightclub when she first met Dr. Ward.
Ward took her under his wing, and they lived together in his London flat
but were not lovers. He encouraged her to pursue sexual relationships with
his high-class friends, and on one or more occasions Keeler apparently accepted
money in exchange for sex. Ward introduced her to his friend Ivanov, and
she began a sexual relationship with the Soviet diplomat. Several weeks
after meeting Profumo at Cliveden, she also began an affair with the war
minister. There is no evidence that either of these men paid her for sex,
but Profumo once gave Keeler some money to buy her mother a birthday present.
After an intense few months, Profumo ended his affair with Keeler before
the end of 1961. His indiscretions might never have come to public attention
were it not for an incident involving Keeler that occurred in early 1963.
Johnny Edgecombe, a West Indian marijuana dealer, was arrested for shooting
up the exterior of Ward's London flat after Keeler, his ex-lover, refused
to let him in. The press gave considerable coverage to the incident and
subsequent trial, and rumors were soon abounding about Keeler's earlier
relationship with Profumo. When Keeler
confirmed reports of her affair with Profumo, and admitted a concurrent
relationship with Ivanov, what had been cocktail-party gossip grew into
a scandal with serious security connotations. On 21 March 1963, Colonel
George Wigg, a Labour MP for Dudley, raised the issue in the House of Commons,
inviting the member of government in question to affirm or deny the rumors
of his improprieties. Wigg forced Profumo's hand, not, he claimed, to embarrass
the Conservative government but because the Ivanov connection was a matter
of national security. Behind closed doors, however, British intelligence
had already concluded that Profumo had not compromised national security
in any way and found little evidence implicating Ivanov as a spy. Nevertheless,
Wigg had raised the issue, and Profumo had no choice but to stand up before
Parliament on 22 March and make a statement. He vehemently denied the charges,
saying "there was no impropriety whatsoever in my acquaintanceship with
Miss Keeler." To drive home his point, he continued, "I shall not hesitate
to issue writs for libel and slander if scandalous allegations are made
or repeated outside the House." Profumo's convincing denial defused the
scandal for several weeks, but in May Dr. Stephen Ward went on trial in
London on charges of prostituting Keeler and other young women. In the highly
sensationalized trial, Keeler testified under oath about her relationship
with Profumo. Ward also wrote Harold Wilson, leader of the Labour opposition
in Parliament, and affirmed that Profumo had lied to the House of Commons.
On 04 June, Profumo returned from a holiday
in Italy with his wife and confessed to Conservative leaders that Miss Keeler
had been his mistress and that his 22 March statement to the Commons was
untrue. On 05 June, he resigned as war minister. Prime Minister Macmillan
was widely criticized for his handling of the Profumo scandal. In the press
and in Parliament, Macmillan was condemned as being old, out-of-touch, and
incompetent. In October, he resigned under pressure from his own government.
He was replaced by Conservative Alec Douglas-Home, but in the general election
in 1964 the Conservatives were swept from power by Harold Wilson's Labour
Party. Dr. Stephen Ward fell into a coma after attempting suicide by an
overdose of pills. In his absence, he was found guilty of living off the
immoral earnings of prostitution and died shortly after without regaining
consciousness. Christine Keeler was convicted of perjury in a related trial
and began a prison sentence in December 1963. John Profumo left politics
after his resignation and dedicated himself to philanthropy in the East
End of London. For his charitable work, Queen Elizabeth II named him a Commander
of the British Empire, one of Britain's highest honors, in 1975.

1960 John XXIII published his motu proprio, 'Superno
Dei Nutu,' which created the necessary committees and organizational structure
for the upcoming Vatican II Ecumenical Council (1962-65).

^1956 Elvis creates uproar
Elvis introduces his new single, "Hound
Dog," on The Milton Berle Show. Elvis scandalized the audience
with his suggestive hip gyrations. In the media frenzy that followed,
other show hosts, including Ed Sullivan, denounced his performance.
Sullivan swore he would never invite Presley on his own show, but
that autumn he booked Elvis for three shows. Presley had been recording
since 1954. While working at a Memphis electrical shop, the 18-year-old
Presley dropped by a Memphis recording studio on a lunch break and
paid $4 to record two songs for his mother's birthday. The office
assistant at Sun Records, where he made the recording, was so impressed
that she brought the record to studio executive Sam Phillips, who
signed him in 1954. His first recording, "That's All Right," hit No.
4 on the country-western charts in Memphis. Elvis soon began performing
regularly on radio programs and made his television debut on a Memphis
show in March 1955. That September, he had his first No. 1 country
record--a rendition of Junior Parker's "Mystery Train." RCA purchased
Presley's contract, and he made his first RCA recordings in Nashville
in 1956, including "I Got a Woman," "Heartbreak Hotel," and "I Was
the One." On 28 January 1956,
television audiences met Presley on the variety program Stage Show.
He appeared on several more programs before filming his first movie,
Love Me Tender (1956), which took just three days to earn back its
$1 million cost. All of Presley's singles that year went gold. Elvis'
controversial dancing, with his trademark hip gyrations, upset parents
but delighted teenage girls. During an appearance on The Ed Sullivan
Show in 1956, cameras showed him only from the waist up. Elvis received
his draft notice in December 1957 but took a deferment to finish filming
his fourth movie, King Creole. Before his military induction, he recorded
enough material so that the stream of Elvis hits was uninterrupted
during his tour of duty. He continued to dominate the charts through
the mid-'60s and made more than 20 movies. Elvis stopped performing
live in 1961 but made a comeback in the late '60s, becoming a Las
Vegas fixture and releasing several top singles, including "In the
Ghetto" and "Suspicious Minds" in 1969. As his popularity continued
to skyrocket, the "King of Rock and Roll" reportedly turned to drugs.
His final live performance was on 25 June 1977, and on 16 August 1977,
the day of his next scheduled concert, his girlfriend found him dead
in a bathroom at Graceland, the Memphis mansion he built and named
after his mother. Congestive heart failure was cited as the cause
of death, but prescription drug abuse was suspected as a contributing
factor. He was buried at Graceland. Nine years after his death, he
was one of the first 10 people inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall
of Fame. During his life, he had scored 94 gold singles and more than
40 gold LPs.

You ain't nothin' but a hound dog cryin'
all the time.
You ain't nothin' but a hound dog cryin' all the time
Well, you ain't never caught a rabbit and you ain't no friend of mine.

When they said you was high classed, well,
that was just a lie.
When they said you was high classed, well, that was just a lie.
You ain't never caught a rabbit and you ain't no friend of mine.

^1947 Marshall proposes his Plan.
During a commencement speech at Harvard
University, US Secretary of State George C. Marshall outlined his
proposal to provide massive US aid to postwar Europe, warning that
devastated countries such as France and Germany "must have substantial
additional help or face economic, social, and political deterioration
of a very grave character." US President Harry S. Truman, who dubbed
the proposal the "Marshall Plan," put Marshall at the head of the
committee that designed the foreign assistance package and presented
it to Congress. In addition to working closely with congressional
members, Secretary of State Marshall also toured the country to promote
the bill and encourage its passage. After a lengthy debate, Congress
passed the Foreign Assistance Act, and on April 3, 1948, President
Truman signed it into law. Between 1948 and 1951, the Marshall Plan
channeled over $13 billion in aid to Europe, sparking economic recovery
in Western and Northern Europe and saving the US economy from a postwar
recession by providing a greater market for American goods. However,
because the USSR prevented countries like Poland and Czechoslovakia
from participating, the Marshall Plan also contributed to the raising
of the "Iron Curtain" between Eastern and Western Europe. In
one of the most significant speeches of the Cold War, Secretary of
State George C. Marshall calls on the United States to assist in the
economic recovery of postwar Europe. His speech provided the impetus
for the so-called Marshall Plan, under which the United States sent
billions of dollars to Western Europe to rebuild the war-torn countries.
In 1946 and into 1947, economic disaster loomed for Western Europe.
World War II had done immense damage, and the crippled economies of
Great Britain and France could not reinvigorate the region's economic
activity. Germany, once the industrial dynamo of Western Europe, lay
in ruins. Unemployment, homelessness, and even starvation were commonplace.
For the United States, the situation was of special concern on two
counts. First, the economic chaos of Western Europe was providing
a prime breeding ground for the growth of communism. Second, the US
economy, which was quickly returning to a civilian state after several
years of war, needed the markets of Western Europe in order to sustain
itself. On 05 June 1947, Secretary
of State George C. Marshall, speaking at Harvard University, outlined
the dire situation in Western Europe and pleaded for US assistance
to the nations of that region. "The truth of the matter," the secretary
claimed, "is that Europe's requirements for the next three or four
years of foreign food and other essential products--principally from
America--are so much greater than her present ability to pay that
she must have substantial additional help or face economic, social,
and political deterioration of a very grave character." Marshall declared,
"Our policy is directed not against any country or doctrine but against
hunger, poverty, desperation, and chaos." In a thinly veiled reference
to the communist threat, he promised "governments, political parties,
or groups which seek to perpetuate human misery in order to profit
therefrom politically or otherwise will encounter the opposition of
the United States." In March 1948, the United States Congress passed
the Economic Cooperation Act (more popularly known as the Marshall
Plan), which set aside $4 billion in aid for Western Europe. By the
time the program ended nearly four years later, the United States
had provided over $12 billion for European economic recovery. British
Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin likened the Marshall Plan to a "lifeline
to sinking men."

1945 At the end of World War II, the Allied Control
Commission takes control of Germany, dividing it into four occupation zones,
one each for USA, UK, USSR, France 1945 Se forma
consejo de guerra en Burgos contra Manuel Hedilla, sucesor de José Antonio
Primo de Rivera en la jefatura de Falange y que se opuso al decreto de unificación
con los tradicionalistas.

1944 Allies prepare for
D-Day^top^
More than 1000 British bombers drop
5000 tons of bombs on German gun batteries placed at the Normandy
assault area, while 3000 Allied ships cross the English Channel in
preparation for the invasion of Normandy-D-Day. The day of the invasion
of occupied France had been postponed repeatedly since May, mostly
because of bad weather and the enormous tactical obstacles involved.
Finally, despite less than ideal weather conditions--or perhaps because
of them--General Eisenhower decides on 05 June to set the next day
as D-Day, the launch of the largest amphibious operation in history.
Ike knows that the Germans would be
expecting postponements beyond the sixth, precisely because weather
conditions are still poor. Among those Germans confident that an Allied
invasion could not be pulled off on the sixth is Field Marshal Erwin
Rommel, who is still debating tactics with Field Marshal Karl Rundstedt.
Runstedt is convinced that the Allies will come in at the narrowest
point of the Channel, between Calais and Dieppe; Rommel, following
Hitler's intuition, believes it would be Normandy. Rommel's greatest
fear is that German air inferiority would prevent an adequate defense
on the ground; it is his plan to meet the Allies on the coast-before
the Allies have a chance to come ashore.
Rommel began constructing underwater obstacles and minefields, and
set off for Germany to demand from Hitler personally more panzer divisions
in the area. Bad weather and an order to conserve fuel grounded much
of the German air force on 05 June; consequently, its reconnaissance
flights were spotty. That night, more than 1000 British bombers unleashed
a massive assault on German gun batteries on the coast. At the same
time, an Allied armada headed for the Normandy beaches in Operation
Neptune, an attempt to capture the port at Cherbourg. But that was
not all. In order to deceive
the Germans, phony operations were run; dummy parachutists and radar-jamming
devices were dropped into strategically key areas so as to make German
radar screens believe there was an Allied convoy already on the move.
One dummy parachute drop succeeded in drawing an entire German infantry
regiment away from its position just 10 km from the actual Normandy
landing beaches. All this effort is to scatter the German defenses
and make way for Operation Overlord, the Allied invasion of Normandy.

1943 ENIAC contract signed The US Army contracted with
the University of Pennsylvania's Moore School to develop an electronic
computer. The contract granted the Moore School $61'700 for the next
six months. The computer, later known as ENIAC (Electronic Numerical
Integrator and Computer) would take more than three years to build:
Although the machine was developed to speed the calculation of firing
tables for artillery, the computer was not finished until shortly
after World War II.

1833
Difference Engine finds young supporter^top^
Augusta Ada Byron, the beautiful teenage daughter of the poet Lord
Byron, born on 10 December 1815, attends a party at the home of Charles
Babbage, a well-known mathematician whose frequent salons draws
luminaries like Darwin, Longfellow, and Dickens. Babbage is hard at
work on a calculating machine he calls the "Difference Engine." [click on image for portraits and MORE ABOUT ADA >]
Ada, a mathematical prodigy, became
fascinated by the machine and quickly befriended Babbage. She and
Babbage kept up a lively correspondence about the machine for many
years, even after her 1935 marriage to the Earl of Lovelace. Ada helped
spread the ideas behind the Difference Engine by publishing scientific
papers describing the machine. These papers were published anonymously--women
in nineteenth-century England rarely published under their own names.
She died at age thirty-six, on 27 November 1852. The
ADA computer programming language was named after her.

^ Deaths
which occurred on a 05 June:
2005 Robert Milne, 49, a software engineer from Edinburgh, Scotland,
collapses and dies 400 meters short of the top of the 8850-meter peak of
Mount Everest.

^2004 Ronald Wilson Reagan,
mediocre movie actor, born on 06 February 1911, whose biggest role
came as the 40th President of the United States (1981-1989). [03
Jul 1996 photo >]
Reagan was the second child of John Edward (“Jack”) Reagan, a struggling
shoe salesman, and Nelle Wilson Reagan. Reagan's nickname, “Dutch,”
derived from his father's habit of referring to his infant son as
his “fat little Dutchman.” After several years of moving from town
to town—made necessary in part because of Jack Reagan's alcoholism,
which made it difficult for him to hold a job—the family settled in
Dixon, Illinois, in 1920. Despite their near poverty and his father's
drinking problem, Reagan later recalled his childhood in Dixon as
the happiest period of his life. At Eureka College in Eureka, Illinois,
Reagan played American football and was active in the drama society
but earned only passing grades. A popular student, he was elected
class president in his senior year. Graduating in 1932 with a bachelor's
degree in economics and sociology, he decided to enter radio broadcasting.
He landed a job as a sportscaster at station WOC in Davenport, Iowa,
by delivering entirely from memory an exciting play-by-play description
of a Eureka College football game. Later he moved to station WHO in
Des Moines, where, as sportscaster “Dutch Reagan,” he became popular
throughout the state for his broadcasts of Chicago Cubs baseball games.
Because the station could not afford to send him to Wrigley Field
in Chicago, Reagan was forced to improvise a running account of the
games based on sketchy details delivered over a teletype machine.
In 1937 Reagan followed the Cubs
to their spring training camp in southern California, a trip he undertook
partly in order to try his hand at movie acting. After a successful
screen test at Warner Brothers, he was soon typecast in a series of
mostly B movies as a sincere, wholesome, easygoing, “good guy.” (As
many observers have noted, the characters that Reagan portrayed in
the movies were remarkably like Reagan himself.) During the next 27
years he appeared in more than 50 films, notably including Knute
Rockne, All American (1940), Kings Row (1942), and The
Hasty Heart (1950). In 1938, while filming Brother Rat,
Reagan became engaged to his costar Jane Wyman, and the couple married
in Hollywood two years later. They had a daughter, Maureen [1941 –
Aug 2001] and adopted a son, Michael, a few days after his birth in
1945. Their marriage ended in divorce in 1948. Reagan was the only
president to have been divorced. Commissioned a cavalry officer at
the outbreak of World War II, Reagan was assigned to an army film
unit based in Los Angeles, where he spent the rest of the war making
training films. Although he never left the country and never saw combat,
he and Wyman cooperated with Warner Brothers's efforts to portray
him as a real soldier to the public, and in newsreels and magazine
photos he acted out scenes of “going off to war” and “coming home
on leave.” After leaving Hollywood, Reagan became known for occasionally
telling stories about his past, including stories about his happiness
at “coming back from the war”, that were actually based on fictional
episodes in movies. Such lapses suggest that he lacked a basic interest
in the truth and that he had trouble distinguishing between reality
and fantasy. Reagan had absorbed
the liberal Democratic opinions of his father and became a great admirer
of Franklin Roosevelt after his election in 1932. Reagan's father
eventually found work as an administrator in a New Deal office established
in the Dixon area, a fact that Reagan continued to appreciate even
after his political opinion of Roosevelt had dramatically changed.
From 1947 to 1952 Reagan served
as president of the union of movie actors, the Screen Actors Guild.
Much to the disgust of union members, he testified as a friendly witness
before the House Un-American Activities Committee and cooperated in
the blacklisting of actors, directors, and writers suspected of leftist
sympathies. Although still a Democrat at the time (he campaigned for
Harry Truman in the presidential election of 1948), Reagan's political
opinions were gradually growing more conservative. After initially
supporting Democratic senatorial candidate Helen Douglas in 1950 he
switched his allegiance to Republican Richard Nixon [09 Jan 1913 –
22 Apr 1994] midway through the campaign. He supported Republican
Dwight Eisenhower [14 Oct 1890 – 28 Mar 1969] in the presidential
elections of 1952 and 1956, and in 1960 he delivered 200 speeches
in support of Nixon's campaign for president against Democrat John
F. Kennedy [29 May 1917 – 22 Nov 1963]. He officially changed
his party affiliation to Republican in 1962.
Reagan met Nancy Davis [06 Jul 1921~], a relatively unknown actress,
at a dinner party in 1949. They married on 04 Mar 1952; actor William
Holden was best man. The Reagans appeared together in the war movie
Hell Cats of the Navy in 1957. Nancy Reagan's reactionary
political views encouraged her husband's further betrayal of the ideals
he had received from his father.
After his acting career began to decline in the 1950s, Reagan became
the host of a television drama series, General Electric Theater, as
well as spokesman for the General Electric Company. In the latter
capacity he toured GE plants around the country, delivering speeches
with a generally conservative, pro-business message. Eventually, however,
his speeches became too controversial, and he was fired as both spokesman
and television host in 1962. Reagan
campaigned actively for Nixon in his run for governor of California
in 1962 and supported the presidential candidacy of conservative Republican
Barry Goldwater in 1964, serving as cochairman of California Republicans
for Goldwater. In the last week of the campaign he delivered a 30-minute,
nationally televised address, “A Time for Choosing,” that The Washington
Post described as “the most successful political debut since William
Jennings Bryan electrified the 1896 Democratic convention with his
‘Cross of Gold' speech.” Reagan's speech, which resulted in $1 million
in campaign contributions for Republican candidates (the most attributable
to any political speech in history), catapulted him onto the national
political stage and made him an instant hero of the Republican right.
Reagan announced his candidacy
for governor of California in 1966. The incumbent, Democrat Edmund
G. (“Pat”) Brown (who had defeated Nixon's challenge in 1962), ridiculed
Reagan's lack of experience, declaring that while he (Brown) had been
serving the public, Reagan was making Bedtime for Bonzo,
a 1951 movie in which Reagan starred with a chimpanzee. But Reagan
turned this apparent liability into an asset by portraying himself
as an ordinary citizen who was fed up with a state government that
had become inefficient and unaccountable (he made a monkey out of
Brown). The public also reacted well to Reagan's personality, in particular
to his apparent genuineness, affability, and self-deprecating sense
of humor. (When asked by a reporter how he would perform in office,
Reagan replied, “I don't know. I've never played a governor.”) Reagan
won the election by nearly one million votes. During his two terms
as governor (1966–1974), Reagan erased a substantial budget deficit
inherited from the Brown administration (through the largest tax increase
in the history of any state to that time) and instituted reforms in
the state's welfare programs. As some observers have noted, Reagan's
administrative style as governor was essentially the same as the one
he would later adopt as president: he left most of the day-to-day
business of government to assistants and department heads, preferring
to focus on larger issues of policy and vision. Reagan followed a
rigid schedule, which his aides would prepare and type up for him
daily. Reagan made a halfhearted
bid for the Republican presidential nomination in 1968 as a favorite-son
candidate, finishing third behind Nixon and former New York governor
Nelson Rockefeller [08 Jul 1908 – 26 Jan 1979]. During his remaining
years as governor he made plans for a more serious run for the presidency,
expecting that his chance would come in 1976, at the anticipated end
of Nixon's second term. But Nixon's resignation in 1974 put Vice President
Gerald Ford [14 Jul 1913~] in the Oval Office. Unwilling to wait another
eight years, Reagan challenged Ford with a blistering critique of
his policies and appointments but lost the nomination by 60 votes.
Reagan dominated the Republican primary
elections in 1980. Although his strongest opponent, George H. W. Bush
[12 Jun 1924~], won an upset victory
in the Iowa caucuses, Reagan bounced back after a memorable performance
in a debate with other Republican candidates in Nashua, New Hampshire.
When the moderator tried to turn off Reagan's microphone, he responded
with an angry line he remembered from a Spencer Tracy movie: “I paid
for this microphone!” Reagan went on to win New Hampshire and most
of the other major primaries and entered the convention with a commanding
lead; he won the nomination on the first ballot with 1939 votes to
37 for John Anderson and 13 for Bush, who had withdrawn from the contest
before the vote. After some tense and ultimately fruitless negotiations
with representatives of Ford, Reagan chose Bush as his running mate,
and the two men campaigned against Democratic incumbents Jimmy Carter
[01 Oct 1924~] and Walter Mondale [05 Jan 1928~] on a platform promising
the incompatible (which Bush had earlier called “voodoo economics”
and would become known as reaganomics): steep tax cuts, increased
defense spending, a balanced budget; and what is not decided (though
it can be influenced) by a President: a constitutional amendment to
ban abortion. Carter began the
campaign in a vulnerable position. Inflation had increased from 6%
to more than 12% per annum since his first year in office, and unemployment
and interest rates were also high. An even more important factor than
the economy, however, was Carter's apparent inability to resolve the
Iran hostage crisis, which had continued for almost a year at the
time of the election. On 04 November 1979, a mob of Iranian students
stormed the US embassy in Tehran, Iran, and took the diplomatic staff
there hostage. In April 1980, after months of fruitless negotiations
with students and officials of Iran's revolutionary government (which
had sanctioned the takeover), Carter ordered a military rescue operation,
which failed dramatically. The hostage crisis contributed to a general
public perception of the Carter administration as weak and indecisive,
and the failed rescue mission reinforced Reagan's charge that the
Democrats had allowed the country's military to deteriorate badly.
In their only debate of the campaign, Reagan memorably reminded his
national television audience of the country's economic problems by
asking, “Are you better off now than you were four years ago?” Carter,
for his part, tried to make the most of Reagan's image among some
of the electorate as an extremist and a warmonger, charging that as
president Reagan would eliminate cherished social programs and threaten
world peace. Reagan's smiling response to such charges—“There you
go again” (a line he had practiced in preparation for the debate)—did
not directly address the point, but it did convey a disarming image
of sincerity, self-confidence, and friendliness, which most voters
found appealing. On election day Reagan defeated Carter and John Anderson
(who ran as an independent) with 51% of the popular vote to Carter's
41% and Anderson's 7%; the vote in the electoral college was 483 to
Carter's 49. Reagan's presidency
began on a dramatic note when, at a luncheon after the inaugural ceremony,
he announced that Iran had agreed to release the remaining American
hostages. The timing of Iran's decision led to suspicions that the
Reagan campaign had made a secret deal with the Iranians to prevent
the Carter administration from unveiling a so-called “October surprise”,
the release of the hostages in October 1980, before election day.
On 30 March 1981, a deranged drifter,
John W. Hinckley, Jr., fired six shots from a .22 caliber revolver
at Reagan as he left a Washington DC hotel. One of the bullets entered
Reagan's chest, puncturing a lung and lodging one inch from his heart;
another critically wounded Press Secretary James Brady. Rushed to
George Washington University Hospital for emergency surgery, Reagan
joked with doctors as he was being wheeled into the operating room:
“I hope you're all Republicans.” After his release 12 days later,
Reagan made a series of carefully staged public appearances designed
to give the impression that he was recovering quickly, though in fact
he remained seriously weakened for months and his workload was sharply
curtailed. In August 1981, 13'000
members of the national union of air traffic controllers, the Professional
Air Traffic Controllers Organization (PATCO), one of the few unions
to endorse Reagan in the 1980 election, walked off their jobs, demanding
higher pay and better working conditions. As federal employees, the
PATCO members were forbidden by law to strike, and Reagan, on the
advice of Transportation Secretary Drew Lewis, refused to negotiate
and gave them 48 hours to return to work. Most of the striking controllers
ignored the ultimatum and were promptly fired. The firings caused
delays and reductions in air traffic. Following
the so-called “supply-side” economic program he propounded in his
campaign, Reagan proposed massive tax cuts, 30% reductions in both
individual and corporate income taxes over a three-year period, which
he believed would stimulate the economy and eventually increase revenues
from taxes as income levels grew. At the same time, he proposed large
increases in military expenditures ($1.5 trillion over a five-year
period) and significant cuts in “discretionary” spending on social-welfare
programs such as education, food stamps, low-income housing, school
lunches for poor children, Medicaid (the major program of health insurance
for the poor), and Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC).
In 1981 Congress passed most of the president's budget proposals,
though the tax cut was scaled back slightly, to 25%.
The results were mixed. A severe recession in 1982 pushed the nation's
unemployment rate to nearly 11%, the highest it had been since the
Great Depression. Bankruptcies and farm foreclosures reached record
levels. The country's trade deficit increased from $25 billion in
1980 to $111 billion in 1984. In addition, the huge increases in military
spending, combined with insufficient cuts in other programs, produced
massive budget deficits, the largest in the country's history; by
the end of Reagan's second term the deficits would contribute to a
tripling of the national debt, to more than $2.5 trillion. In order
to address the deficit problem, Reagan backed away from strict supply-side
theories to support a $98.3 billion tax increase in 1982. By early
1983 the economy had begun to recover, and by the end of that year
unemployment and inflation were significantly reduced and remained
relatively low in later years. Economic growth continued through the
remainder of Reagan's presidency. But the tax cuts and the fruits
of economic growth benefited mainly the wealthy, and the gap between
rich and poor had grown wider.
In keeping with his aim of reducing the role of government in the
country's economic life, Reagan cut the budgets of many government
departments and relaxed or ignored the enforcement of laws and regulations
administered by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Department
of Interior, the Department of Transportation, and the Civil Rights
Division of the Department of Justice, among other agencies. After
the administration and Congress reduced regulations governing the
savings and loan industry in the early 1980s, many savings institutions
expanded recklessly through the decade and eventually collapsed,requiring
bailouts by the federal government that cost taxpayers some $500 billion.
During his tenure in office Reagan
appointed more than half the federal judiciary and three new justices
of the Supreme Court: El Paso native Sandra Day O'Connor [26 Mar 1930~],
the first woman appointed to the Supreme Court, Anthony Kennedy [23
Jul 1936~], and Antonin Scalia [11 Mar 1936~]. He also elevated William
Rehnquist [01 Oct 1924~] to chief justice in 1986 upon the retirement
of Warren Burger [17 Sep 1907 – 25 Jun 1995].
When Reagan entered office in 1980 he believed that the United States
had grown weak militarily and had lost the respect it once commanded
in world affairs. Aiming to restore the country to a position of moral
as well as military preeminence in the world, he called for massive
increases in the defense budget to expand and modernize the military
and urged a more aggressive approach to combating communism and related
forms of leftist totalitarianism. Reagan's
militant anticommunism, combined with his penchant for harsh anti-Soviet
rhetoric, was one of many factors that contributed to a worsening
of relations with the Soviet Union in the first years of his presidency.
At his first press conference as president, Reagan audaciously questioned
the legitimacy of the Soviet government; two years later, in a memorable
speech in Florida, he denounced the Soviet Union as “an evil empire”
and “the focus of evil in the modern world.” The Soviets responded
by saying that Reagan's remarks showed that his administration “can
think only in terms of confrontation and bellicose, lunatic anticommunism.”
The behavior of the Soviet Union itself also strained relations, especially
in December 1981, when the communist government of Poland, under intense
pressure from Moscow, imposed martial law on the country to suppress
the independent labor movement Solidarity; and in September 1983,
when the Soviets shot down a Korean airliner en route from Alaska
to Seoul as it strayed over strategically sensitive territory on Sakhalin
Island. All 269 persons aboard were killed, including 61 from the
US. Reagan's massive military spending program, the largest in US
peacetime history, was undoubtedly another factor.
A significant component of Reagan's military buildup was his 1983
proposal for a space-based missile defense system that would use lasers
and other as yet undeveloped killing technologies to destroy incoming
Soviet nuclear missiles well before they could reach their targets
in the United States. The Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), dubbed
“Star Wars” after the popular science-fiction movie of the late 1970s,
was denounced by the Soviets, including Gorbachev, as a dangerous
escalation of the arms race, a position also taken by many critics
at home. Meanwhile, others argued that the project was technologically
impossible and potentially a “black hole” in the country's defense
budget. Although Reagan never abandoned his support for SDI, it was
eventually reconceived as a much smaller and more conventional defensive
system than the one he originally proposed.
US-Soviet relations improved considerably during Reagan's second term,
not least because Reagan softened his anticommunist rhetoric and adopted
a more encouraging tone toward the changes then taking place in the
Soviet Union. At a dramatic summit meeting in Reykjavík, Iceland,
in October 1986, Gorbachev proposed a 50% reduction in the nuclear
arsenals of each side, and for a time it seemed as though a historic
agreement would be reached. Although the summit ended in failure owing
to differences over SDI, it was followed up in December 1987 by a
treaty eliminating intermediate-range nuclear forces (INF) on European
soil. The INF Treaty was the first arms-control pact to require an
actual reduction in nuclear arsenals rather than merely restricting
their proliferation. Following
the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in June 1982, Reagan dispatched 800
marines to join an international force to oversee the evacuation of
Palestinian guerrillas from West Beirut, then surrounded by Israeli
troops. After Israel withdrew its troops from the Beirut area in September
1983, the marine contingent remained, along with forces from Italy,
France, and Britain, to protect the fragile Lebanese government, thereby
identifying itself with one of the factions in the country's long
and bloody civil war, which had begun in 1975. On the morning of 23
October 1983, a suicide bomber drove a truck laden with explosives
into the marine compound at the Beirut airport, killing 241 marines
and wounding 100 others. Although later investigations blamed the
marine chain of command for poor security at the base and “serious
errors in judgment,” Reagan decided to accept full blame for the tragedy
himself, saying that the marine commanders had “suffered enough.”
Reagan withdrew the marines from Lebanon in February 1984.
In the Caribbean island nation of Grenada, Prime Minister Maurice
Bishop was deposed and executed in a bloody coup by radical elements
of his leftist New Jewel Movement. Less than a week later, and only
one day after the bombing of the marine compound in Lebanon, Reagan
ordered an invasion, which he justified as necessary to prevent the
country from becoming a dangerous Soviet outpost and to protect American
students at the medical school there. Joined by a contingent of troops
from neighboring Caribbean countries, US forces quickly subdued elements
of the Grenadan army and a small number of Cuban soldiers and construction
workers. It seemed that the administration had staged the invasion
to divert public attention from the bombing in Lebanon.
In January 1986 Reagan announced the imposition of economic sanctions
on Libya and froze the country's assets in the United States, charging
the Libyan government of General Muammar al-Qaddafi [1942~] with sponsoring
acts of international terrorism, including the December 1985 attacks
on offices of the Israeli airline El Al in Rome and Vienna. In March
1986 a US Navy task force conducted “freedom of navigation” exercises
in the Gulf of Sidra, beyond the self-proclaimed territorial boundary
Libya called the “Line of Death.” Libya fired antiaircraft missiles
at US warplanes, and the United States responded with attacks on Libyan
ships and missile installations. Then, on 05 April 1986, two persons,
including a US serviceman, were killed by a bomb explosion in a discotheque
in West Berlin. Blaming Libya, the United States carried out retaliatory
bombing raids on “terrorist-related targets” in Libya on 14 and 15
April 1986, including an attack on Qaddafi's residential compound
in Tripoli which killed his 15-month-old adopted daughter and more
than 40 other persons (Qaddafi
on 06 Jun 2004: “I express my profound regrets over Reagan's
death before he appeared before justice to be held to account for
his ugly crime in 1986 against Libyan children.”).
In keeping with Reagan's belief that the United States should do more
to prevent the spread of communism, his administration expanded military
and economic assistance to friendly Third World governments battling
leftist insurgencies, and he actively supported guerrilla movements
and other opposition forces in countries with leftist governments.
This policy, which became known as the Reagan Doctrine, was applied
with particular zeal in Latin America. During the 1980s the United
States supported military-dominated governments in El Salvador in
a bloody civil war with the Frente Farabundo Martí de Liberación Nacional
(FMLN), providing the country with some $4 billion in military and
economic aid and helping to organize and train elite units of the
Salvadoran army. In Nicaragua,
following the overthrow of the Somoza dictatorship by the Frente Sandinista
de Liberación Nacional (FSLN) in 1979, the Sandinista government strengthened
its ties to Cuba and other countries of the socialist bloc, a move
that the Reagan administration regarded as a threat to the national
security of the United States. In 1981 Reagan authorized $20 million
to recruit and train a band of anti-Sandinista guerrillas, many of
whom were former supporters of Somoza, to overthrow the Sandinista
government. Numbering about 15'000 by the mid-1980s, the “Contras,”
as they came to be called, were never a serious military threat to
the Sandinistas, though they did cause millions of dollars in damage
to the Nicaraguan economy through their attacks on farms and cooperatives,
infrastructure, and other civilian targets. Using its influence in
international lending agencies such as the World Bank, the United
States was able to block most Nicaraguan loan requests from 1982,
and in 1985 the administration declared a trade embargo. These measures,
combined with Contra attacks and the Sandinista's own mismanagement,
effectively undermined the Nicaraguan economy by the end of the 1980s.
At the time of the presidential election
of 1984, Reagan was at the height of his popularity. Using slogans
such as “It's morning in America” and “America is back,” his reelection
campaign emphasized the country's economic prosperity and its renewed
leadership role in world affairs. On election day Reagan and Bush
easily defeated their Democratic opponents, Walter Mondale and Geraldine
Ferraro [26 Aug 1935~], by 59% to 41% of the popular vote; in the
electoral college Reagan received 525 votes to Mondale's 49, the largest
number of electoral votes of any candidate in history. With most of
the country behind him, Reagan's prospects in his second term appeared
bright. Only two years later, however, he would become embroiled in
the worst scandal of his political career, one that would cost him
much popular and party support and significantly impair his ability
to lead the country. In early
November 1985, at the suggestion of the head of the National Security
Council (NSC), William (“Bud”) McFarlane, Reagan authorized a secret
initiative to sell antitank and antiaircraft missiles to Iran in exchange
for that country's help in securing the release of US citizens held
hostage by terrorist groups in Lebanon. The initiative directly contradicted
the administration's publicly stated policy of refusing to negotiate
with terrorists or to aid countries, such as Iran, that supported
international terrorism. News of the arms-for-hostages deal, first
made public in November 1986 (only one month after Reagan ordered
raids on Libya in retaliation for its alleged involvement in the Berlin
bombing), proved intensely embarrassing to the president. Even more
damaging, however, was the announcement later that month by Attorney
General Edwin Meese that a portion of the $48 million earned from
the sales had been diverted to a secret fund to purchase weapons and
supplies for the Contras in Nicaragua. The diversion was undertaken
by an obscure NSC aide, US Marine Corps Lieutenant Colonel Oliver
North, with the approval of McFarlane's successor at the NSC, Rear
Admiral John Poindexter. North, as it was later revealed, had also
engaged in private fund-raising for the Contras. These activities
constituted a violation of a law passed by Congress in 1984 (the second
Boland Amendment) that forbade direct or indirect US military aid
to the Contra insurgency. In response
to the crisis, by this time known as the Iran-Contra Affair, Reagan
fired both North and Poindexter and appointed a special commission,
headed by former senator John Tower of Texas (the Tower Commission),
to investigate the matter. An independent counsel, Judge Lawrence
Walsh, was also appointed, and the House and Senate began joint hearings
to examine both the arms sales and the military assistance to the
Contras. As a result of Walsh's investigations, North and Poindexter
were convicted on charges of obstructing justice and related offenses,
but their convictions were overturned on appeal, on the ground that
testimony given at their trials had been influenced by information
they had supplied to Congress under a limited grant of immunity. Reagan
accepted responsibility for the arms-for-hostages deal but denied
any knowledge of the diversion. Although no evidence came to light
to indicate that he was more deeply involved, many in Congress and
the public remained skeptical. Nevertheless, most of the public eventually
appeared willing to forgive him for whatever they thought he had done,
and his popularity, which had dropped dramatically during the first
months of the crisis, gradually recovered.
In the presidential election of 1988 Reagan campaigned actively for
the Republican nominee, Vice President Bush. In large part because
of Reagan's continued popularity, Bush defeated Democratic candidate
Michael Dukakis [03 Nov 1933~] by 54% to 46% in the popular vote;
the vote in the electoral college was 426 to 40. Reagan retired to
his home in Los Angeles, where he wrote his autobiography, An
American Life (1990). In a 06
November 1994 letter to the people of the US, Reagan courageously
disclosed that he had been diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease, a degenerative
brain disorder. To alert observers, Reagan's declining health had
been evident for many years. Mindful of her husband's diminished capacity,
Nancy Reagan occasionally would screen him from the press by intercepting
reporters' questions and then whispering an appropriate response in
his ear. Reagan's health problems made public appearances difficult
for the former president and he soon faded away.
[see also The
New York Times
obituary]

2004 Martin Heemeyer, 52, in Granby, Ohio, soon after midnight,
in a D-5 Caterpillar bulldozer he armor-plated with a layer of concrete
between two plates of 12mm-steel, at which police had been shooting and
dropping explosives down the exhaust, after he began, at 15:00 the previous
day, to damage these buildings (plus vehicles, utility poles, and trees):
the Mountain Park Concrete plant, Liberty Savings Bank, the town hall and
library, the Sky-Hi News office, Maple Street Builders, Mountain Parks Electric,
Xcel Energy, Kopy Kat Graphics & Printing, the home of the late Mayor
L.R. "Dick" Thompson, and Gambles General Hardware store where it stopped
in the rubble of a warehouse at 16:40. Heemeyer was armed with a .50-caliber
gun, but seems to have been careful not to hurt anybody. Heemeyer was angry
after the April 2002 dismissal of his lawsuit opposing a 2000 city council
decision that allowed the concrete plant to be built near his muffler shop
(which he sold in the fall of 2002). Heemeyer had also paid a $2500 fine
for not having a septic tank and for having junk cars at his business. The
police finally used a blowtorch at 02:00 to open up the bulldozer cab.2002 Israelis Sgt. Dotan Reisel, 22, Corp. Liron Avitan, 19, Sgt.
Violetta Hizgayev, 19, Staff Sgt. Eliran Buskila, 21, Corp. Vladimir Morari,
19, Staff Sgt. Zvika Gelberd, 20, Staff Sgt. Gennadi Issakov, 20, Corp.
Dennis Bleuman, 20, Zion Agmon, 50, all 9 from Hadera;
Corp. Avraham Barzilai, 19; Sgt. Sariel Katz, 21; Sgt.
Yigal Nedipur, 21; Staff Sgt. David Stanislavsky, 23, all 4 from
Netanya; Sgt. Sivan Wiener, 19, from Holon; Adi
Dahan, 17, from Afula; Shimon Timsit, 35, from
Tel-Aviv; Eliyahu Timsit, 32, from Sderot; and
Hamze Samudi, Palestinian driver of a suicide car bomb which explodes
next to a bus near Megiddo junction, Israel, at about 07:15. 13 of the dead
are Israeli soldiers, as are most of the 38 injured. The bus is completely
destroyed and nothing recognizable remains of the attacking car other than
an engine block. The Egged 830 bus had left Tel Aviv at 05:50 bound for
Tiberias, and was traveling from Afula to Hadera. The Jerusalem Brigades,
the military wing of Islamic Jihad, announces that it is its doing, to mark
the 35th anniversary of the start of Six-Day War, in which Israel captured
the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and that the martyr driving the
car was from Jenin. A few hours later the Israelis attack Jenin with tanks
and machine-gun fire from helicopters, and call it a routine operation.
^1993: 24 UN peacekeepers massacred in Somalia
In the Somalian capital of Mogadishu, twenty-four
Pakistani UN peacekeepers are ambushed and massacred while inspecting a
weapons storage site. The attack occurs in the southern portion of the city,
which is under the control of Somali warlord General Mohammed Aidid. The
next day, the UN Security Council issues an emergency resolution tacitly
calling for the arrest of Aidid, and US and UN forces began an extensive
search for the elusive strongman. In
late 1992, civil war, clan-based fighting, and the worst African drought
of the century created famine conditions that threatened one-fourth of Somalia’s
population with starvation. In August, the UN began a peacekeeping mission
to the country to assure the distribution of food and medical aid. On 04
December, with deteriorating security and the UN troops unable to control
Somalia’s warring factions, US President George H. W. Bush [12
Jun 1924~] ordered 25'000 US soldiers into Somalia. Although he promised
the troops involved that the humanitarian mission was not an open-ended
commitment, "Operation Restore Hope" remained unresolved when Bill Clinton
took over the presidency on 20 January 1993.
Like his predecessor, Clinton was anxious to bring the US troops home, and
in May the mission was formally handed back to the UN By June, only 4200
US soldiers remained. However, on 05 June the Pakistani peacekeepers are
massacred by Aidid, and US forces escalate their attacks on Aidid's strongholds,
resulting in increased US casualties. On 26 August, four hundred elite US
soldiers from Delta Force and the US Rangers arrived on a mission to bolster
the US force in Somalia and capture Aidid. Two months later, on 03 Octoberand
04 October, eighteen of these soldiers were killed and eighty-four wounded
during a disastrous assault on Mogadishu’s Olympia Hotel in search of Aidid.
The bloody battle, which lasted seventeen hours, was the most violent US
combat firefight since Vietnam. Three days later, with Aidid still at large,
President Clinton cut his losses and ordered a total US withdrawal. On 25
March 1994, the last US troops left Somalia.

^1989 More people killed by troops in Beijing,
even after Tienanmen Square has been bloodily cleared
of demonstrators during the last two days.Troops
Rampage Through Beijing -- Beijing Citizens Show Courage Beyond Beliefhttp://www.cnd.org/June4th/1989.06-05.hz8.html
BEIJING - Machine-gun and small arms fire ripped through the heart of the
capital last night and early this morning as security forces continued to
savagely suppress China's short-lived Freedom Spring. Hundreds of tanks
and armored vehicles clattered through the streets, firing long bursts from
turret-mounted machine guns. At times the fire was directed at crowds of
protesters still milling at intersections.
The Chinese official media proclaimed that the military had won a "glorious
victory" over "scoundrels and rebellious elements." The government pledged
to act "mercilessly" to "crush turmoil." Merciless is almost too mild a
word to describe the military rampage.
In an assault witnessed by a reporter last night, soldiers firing AK-47
assault rifles charged a small knot of demonstrators on a major avenue.
The protesters quickly dispersed. The soldiers then abruptly turned down
a narrow market lane, shooting indiscriminately as shoppers screamed and
scrambled for cover. A young woman was killed, shot in the throat while
carrying a basket of apricots. Several other people were seriously wounded.
The soldiers made no attempt to assist the wounded.
Sections of the capital resembled a war zone, with dozens of buses burning
at major intersections. Helicopters droned continuously overhead. Changan
Avenue was strewn with rubble, smashed bicycles and overturned military
trucks. Three soldiers were reported killed, two of them crushed by their
own tanks. Tiananmen Square was cordoned
off by at least 75 tanks and thousands of troops. Smoke rose as soldiers
apparently set fire to the tents and lean-tos that had sheltered the youthful
protesters. Soldiers positioned around the square fired upon four Western
journalists who approached on foot in daylight.
In at least seven major cities across China, crowds marched to protest the
Beijing massacre. The cities included Shanghai, Changsha, Dalian and Shenyang.
Troops did not intervene to stop the marches in the provincial cities.
Meanwhile, the remaining Tiananmen protesters
were barricaded in the campus of Beijing University and the adjacent People's
University, where they had driven a captured armored personnel carrier.
Students could be seen firing the vehicle's machine gun into the air. Memorial
vigils were held on the sprawling campus.
Early Monday morning 05 June 1989, tanks roared up and down Changan Avenue,
crushing hastily constructed barricades of food carts, bicycles and scraps
of wood and metal. As the army trucks and tanks raced by, small knots of
people cursed them, shaking their fists.
"Why don't you go home," shouted a pedicab driver. "You don't belong here
with your guns pointed at us." No sooner had the man spoken than one grinning
soldier aimed his AK-47 rifle over the head of the driver and his passenger
and fired several bursts. Both hit the ground, causing the soldier to roar
with laughter. "Pigs!" yelled the driver.
Gunfire rocked the city's embassy section at about 13:00 as troops moved
north past the compound housing the American ambassador's residence and
the press and cultural section of the US Embassy. "They're shooting right
outside my office!" US Embassy spokesman Andy Koss suddenly shouted in the
midst of an early afternoon telephone interview. "They're army trucks. They're
heading north on the road next to my office. Oh goddam it! It's unbelievable.
They've got guns ready, they're shooting up into the air."
A column of 10 tanks and 10 armored personnel carriers that headed east
out of Tian An Men Square around noon was stopped by a single man who stood
in front of the lead tank, according to a Western witness. He climbed up
on the tank, talked with someone inside, then climbed down and walked away
alive. Late Monday morning, a crowd
stood surrounding soldiers at the Jianguomen Bridge, where some people have
been shot to death. Beginning around 1 p.m., gunfire was heard near the
bridge. It was not immediately known whether people were injured or killed,
but shortly after 1:30 p.m., an army truck was set on fire on the main highway
near the bridge, and ammunition on the truck could be heard exploding. A
witness said the truck had broken down and been left behind when a convoy
of about 100 vehicles passed by. Someone took a crowbar, forced open the
gas tank and dropped in the burning stuffing from a captured helmet. Protesters
then moved on to at least seven other nearby abandoned army trucks and methodically
set them on fire. About 30 tanks and
15 truckloads of soldiers took up fighting positions facing east along the
Changan Avenue at the major Jianguomenwai intersection, and explosions and
small-arms fire were heard later, witnesses said.
One Western diplomat described seeing a solitary man crouching behind a
bush laboriously making a Molotov cocktail in the early hours of Monday
as an army convoy passed yards away from him. He finally made a direct hit
on a tank. According to Chinese witnesses,
a mob in southwest Beijing lynched an army officer and left his corpse hanging
from a bridge. There have also been cases of students sheltering captured
soldiers from the wrath of other citizens.
But mainly the hatred of troops has brought a solidarity. "There has never
been a unity among Beijing people as there is now," said one old man.
"We cannot cry any more. It is too evil for
tears," said a young woman shortly after troops shot two people dead near
her home. "We can only fight and try to tell the world." "Blood
must be repaid with blood," read one slogan daubed on a wall on Monday.
A diplomat commented: "So far the blood is flowing mostly one way."

1985 K.
C. Sreedharam Pillai, India-born (20 February 1920) Indiana
statistician. 1976 Fourteen die as Teton Dam in Idaho bursts
causing $1 billion in damage.1970 José Antonio Montalvo Berbeo,
político colombiano.1944 Alice Weill (née Levy) [03
Aug 1893–], at the Auschwitz death camp, to which the Nazis had deported
her from France, where she was born at Belfort.1944 Louis Weill
[30 May 1883–], at the Auschwitz death camp, to which the Nazis had
deported him from France, where he was born at Pontailler-sur-Saône (Côte-d'Or).
1940 Augustus
Edward Hough Love, English physicist and mathematician born
on 17 April 1863. He wrote A Treatise on the Mathematical Theory of
Elasticity (2 volumes 1892, 1893) and Some Problems in Geodynamics.
He discovered short wavelength earthquake waves now called Love Waves.

^1922 George W. Carmack, discoverer of Klondike
gold. George
W. Carmack, the first person to discover gold along the Klondike River,
dies in Vancouver, British Columbia. Carmack was born into a life
of prospecting and mining. His father was a forty-niner who settled
his family in Contra Costa County, California. When he was in his
early 20s, Carmack followed his father's example, setting off on long
prospecting journeys that took him from Juneau, Alaska, to the Yukon
Territory of northwest Canada. There, he married a woman from the
Tagish, a small tribe of Native Americans from the southern Yukon.
Unlike many prospectors, Carmack was not consumed by the lust to find
gold. For several years, he was happy to wander about the Yukon with
his wife's people. When he did settle down in a cabin on the upper
Yukon River, he enjoyed performing on an organ, reading periodicals
like Scientific American, and occasionally writing sentimental poetry.
In the summer of 1896, Carmack was
fishing for salmon near the confluence of the Yukon and Klondike River.
Accompanied by two Tagish friends, Carmack decided to explore Rabbit
Creek, a tributary of the Klondike. As he did habitually, Carmack
stopped occasionally to pan for signs of gold along the creek. At
first, he found little of the telltale yellowish color in his pan.
Then, on 17 August 1896, he stumbled across a deposit of gold so rich
that he needed no pan to see it: Thumb-sized pieces of gold lay scattered
about the creek bed. Carmack's two Tagish companions later said they
had actually found the gold while Carmack was asleep under a birch
tree. Regardless of who deserved
the credit, the discovery sparked one of the last great western gold
rushes. Thousands of would-be miners raced for the Klondike the following
year. Partly because there was no other big news at the time, American
newspapers exaggerated the reports of the gold fields in the Klondike.
Steamship and outfitting companies did their part to promote the rush
as well. Historians estimate that as many as 100'000 persons set out
for the Yukon gold fields, though perhaps only half that number actually
reached the diggings. Unlike Carmack, few of the gold seekers were
experienced in prospecting or mining, and many were turned back by
sickness, starvation, and the bitter northern cold. Carmack was luckier.
After making several valuable claims, he abandoned his wandering life
with the Tagish and set to work mining gold. According to some reports,
when he returned to the United States in 1898 he had found gold worth
more than a million dollars. Now a wealthy and influential man, Carmack
moved to Vancouver BC, where he married the daughter of a successful
mining operator. No mention was made of his earlier Tagish wife, Carmack
may have simply abandoned her. He died in Vancouver at the age of
61.

^1864 Hundreds of Yanks and Rebs at Battle
of Piedmont.
At Piedmont, Viriginia, Union forces under General David Hunter rout
a Confederate force led by General William "Grumble" Jones, giving
the North their first real success in the 1864 Shenandoah campaign.
As part of his attempt to knock out the Confederates in Virginia,
Union General Ulysses S. Grant sent Franz Sigel to neutralize Rebel
forces in the Shenandoah Valley in western Virginia. But Sigel did
little to assist Grant, instead presiding over a Union defeat at New
Market on 15 May. Hunter, who replaced Sigel, quickly moved toward
the rail center at Staunton with some 11'000 soldiers and another
5000 cavalry troopers. Resisting him were about 5600 soldiers under
the command of Jones and John D. Imboden, cobbled together from various
Confederate units scattered about western Virginia. As the Union force
marched south to Staunton, Imboden moved his part of the army to block
the Yankees. They met north of Piedmont, where Hunter attacked on
the morning of 05 June and forced Imboden to retreat. After being
reinforced by Jones at Piedmont, the Confederates spread out to stop
the Federals but left a small gap in their lines that later proved
fatal. The Union troops pressed through the gap, and Jones was killed
while leading an attempt to drive the Yankees back. The Confederate
line was broken, and the Southerners retreated. Six hundred soldiers
were killed or wounded, and another 1000 were captured; the Yankees
lost 800. Rebel opposition evaporated, and Hunter entered Staunton
the next day. The victory cleared the way for Union occupation of
the upper Shenandoah Valley.

1781 Noël Hallé, French painter, draftsman,
and printmaker, born on 02 September 1711.  MORE
ON HALLÉ AT ART 4 JUNEwith
links to images.1716 Roger
Cotes, English astronomer and mathematician born on 10 July
1682. He edited the second edition of Newton's Principia. Cotes
made advances in the theory of logarithms, the integral calculus and in
numerical methods, particularly interpolation. 1688 The victims
of an earthquake in Benevento, Italy, see of the diocese of which
Cardinal Pietro Francesco Orsini [02 Feb 1649 – 23 Feb 1730] is the
bishop since 1686, and would still be in the earthquake of 14 March 1702.
On 29 May 1724 he would become Pope
Benedict XIII. —(080923)1568 Willem Key,
Flemish artist born in the period 1515-1520.--221 -BC- Chu
Yuan China's poet drowns.

1977 Apple II is released
The Apple II personal computer goes
on sale. The machine, which sells for $1298, becomes the first commercially
successful personal computer. Developer Steve Wozniak had created
the Apple I to impress his friends in the Homebrew Computer Club in
the early 1970s. Wozniak's sidekick, Steve Jobs, urged his friend
to create a computer they could sell, and the two started Apple Computer
in Jobs' garage. The Apple II boasted a color screen and a built-in
version of the BASIC computer language

^1951 Vehicle top with removable panels
Designer Gordon M. Buehrig is issued
a US patent for his "vehicle top with removable panels," an invention
that would eventually appear as a "T-top" on the 1968 Chevrolet Corvette
Stingray. Buehrig was a member
of America’s first generation of automobile stylists. As a boy, he
had always dreamed of designing cars, so at the age of seventeen he
took a summer job with the Yellow Cab Company in Chicago in order
to be around the greatest variety of cars possible. He held the job
until the company discovered he was under-aged. Before he left Chicago,
Buehrig called Clarence Wexelburg, designer for the custom body-building
C.P. Kimball Company, and asked him how he should go about becoming
a car designer. Wexelburg directed him to take classes in drafting,
wood and metal shop, and art. Buehrig pursued all three at Bradley
Polytechnic before leaving for Detroit in search of an apprenticeship,
which he found at Packard. His inexperience limited him to unexciting
work as a body panel designer, but it was at Packard that he made
valuable connections in the design industry and where he first discovered
Le Corbusier’s book, Toward a New Architectrure, a text that would
influence Buehrig’s own aesthetic sense for the rest of his life.
In 1928 Buehrig was the fourth man
hired by Harley Earl for GM’s new Art and Color Section, the first
GM department dedicated solely to design concerns. Buehrig didn’t
stay long there, just long enough to share Earl’s frustration with
the execution of the Art department’s designs. Of the 1929 Buick,
the "pregnant Buick," Buehrig objectd: "Harley Earl’s original design
was a masterpiece, but Art and Color was new and he couldn’t swing
a lot of weight." Leaving GM’s fledgling Art Department may have been
a mistake for Buehrig, as Earl would rapidly establish the department
as the industry’s first design dynasty. But just as likely Buehrig’s
inventiveness would have been harnessed by Earl, and while Buehrig
would have become rich, he might never have achieved the boldness
of his later designs. Buehrig,
just twenty-four, left GM to become chief body designer at Stutz before
moving on to the even more prestigious role of chief designer at Duesenberg.
At the age of twenty-five he began designing America’s most high-profile
car bodies. His crowning achievement came in 1936 with the Cord 810.
Heavily influenced by Le Corbusier’s designs, the 810 had disappearing
headlights, a hidden gas cap, and venetian blind louvers that accentuated
the car’s lean "coffin-nosed" hood. It was an affordable future car.
In 1951 the Museum of Modern Art picked the Cord 810 as one of eight
automobiles selected worldwide to be exhibited as pieces of art. Curator
Arthur Drexel wrote Buehrig that in the museum’s view, the 810 was
"the outstanding American contribution to automobile design." Buehrig
quietly changed the way cars look today. Ironically, his former employer
Harley Earl would follow Buehrig’s work closely, often incorporating
his innovations into GM’s designs. It was Buehrig who first erased
the running board from the American car… and Earl who first got the
credit.

^1949 Ken Follett
Bestselling thriller writer Ken Follett
is born in Wales to a devout Christian family that does not allow
young Ken to watch TV, see movies, or listen to the radio. As a result
of his strict media diet during childhood, Follett became a voracious
reader. After college, he became a reporter for the newspaper in Cardiff,
Wales, his hometown, and later reported for a paper in London. Deciding
he wasn't a very good reporter, he tried his hand at novels after
a friend received a 200-pound advance (less than $400) for a thriller.
Coincidentally, Follett needed about 200 pounds to fix his broken
car, so he wrote a thriller, which was picked up by Everest Publishers.
Although his advance was large enough to fix his car, the book flopped,
and Follett went to work for Everest. He wrote 10 novels during the
next four years, finally breaking through with The Eye of the
Needle. He wrote many more bestselling spy thrillers, then branched
out with historical fiction such as Pillars of the Earth,
about cathedral builders in medieval Europe, and On Wings of Eagles,
a nonfiction account of Ross Perot's mission to rescue employees trapped
in Iran.

He would grow up to be the groundbreaking economist (and therefore
mathematician)
who argued for the benefits of full employment and active government
involvement in economic matters. Keynes's early career centered on
fiscally minded government work, both at home and in India. Following
the close of World War I, Keynes began writing about various economic
issues, publishing all-too prescient attacks on the decision to saddle
Germany with heavy reparations. During this same period Keynes also
began his increasingly critical investigation into then dominant fiscal
policies, including "laissez-faire" economics.

By the early 1930s much of the Western world was struggling through
dire economic slumps, which only reinforced Keynes’s belief that governments,
rather than "natural" fiscal forces, should be relied upon to steer
national finances. Keynes articulated these beliefs in General
Theory of Employment, Interest and Money (1935-1936), a landmark
work that informed Roosevelt's interventionist approach to ending
the Depression.

In 1944,
the US government called on Keynes to partake in the Bretton Woods
Conference and help draft the blueprint for the post- World War II
global fiscal order. Whatever his past success in shaping economic
policy, Keynes's voice was largely drowned out by American leaders.
Just two years after the conference, Keynes died in Sussex, England,
on 21 April 1946.

^1851Uncle
Tom's Cabin; or, Life Among the Lowly The novel begins to appear in
serial form in the Washington National Era, an abolitionist
weekly. The anti-slavery story by Harriet Beecher Stowe [14
Jun 1811 – 01 Jul 1896] would be published in forty installments
over the next ten months. For her story Mrs.
Stowe was paid $300. Although
the weekly had a limited circulation, its audience increased as reader
after reader passed their copy along to another. In March 1852, a
Boston publisher decided to issue Uncle
Tom's Cabin as a book and it became an instant best seller.
Three hundred thousand copies were sold the first year, and about
two million copies were sold worldwide by 1857. For one three-month
period Stowe reportedly received $10'000 in royalties. Across the
nation people discussed the novel and hotly debated the most pressing
socio-political issue dramatized in its narrative, slavery.
Because Uncle Tom's Cabin
so polarized the abolitionist and anti-abolitionist debate, some claim
it to be one of the causes
of the Civil War. Indeed, when President
Lincoln received its author, Harriet Beecher Stowe, at the White
House in 1862, legend has it he exclaimed, "So this is the little
lady who made this big war?" It
is ironic that “an Uncle Tom” has come to mean a Black
who is overeager to win the approval of Whites (as by obsequious behavior
or uncritical acceptance of white values and goals), or even a member
of any low-status group who is overly subservient to or cooperative
with authority. This is because the title character, uncle Tom, is
a pious and faithful slave who accepts his lot in life. [about
the characters in the novel] [summary]

Search
American Memory on the term Uncle Tom's Cabin to find a
wide variety of material concerning the book, subsequent theatrical
adaptations, and related music. See, for example, the musical pieces
"Eliza's
Flight," published in 1852 and "Eva
to Her Papa."

A
search on the term slavery in Narratives
of the American South, 1860-1920 will reveal many non-fiction
accounts of slavery. Tupelo,
by John Hill Aughey, describes the plight of abolitionists living
in the South at the time of secession while quoting a Southern perspective
on slavery.

1823 George Thorndike Angell Mass, lawyer (ASPCA) 1819 John
Couch Adams, mathematician, astronomer. At the age of 24, he
was the first person to predict the position of a planet beyond Uranus,
but this was not published. Thus it would be Urbain
Le Verrier [11 Mar 1811 – 23 Sep 1877] who would make the prediction
leading to the sighting of Neptune on 23 September 1846 by Johann Gottfried
Galle [09 Jun 1812 – 10 Jul 1910] at the Berlin Observatory. Adams
died on 21 January 1892.1814Pierre
Laurent Wantzel, French mathematician who died on 21 May 1848.

1718 (infant baptism) Thomas Chippendale, one of the leading
cabinetmakers of 18th-century England, whose name is synonymous with the
Anglicized Rococo style. His reputation rests in great part on Gentleman
and Cabinet-Maker's Director (1754) with illustrations of almost every
type of mid-18th-century domestic furniture.He died in November 1779 and
was succeeded by his son Thomas Chippendale II (1749-1822].